To really appreciate how this all unfolded, how an unsightly mess became stark-crazy beautiful, you have to start at the beginning.

The day Hugh Freeze walked into the school he loved all his life and found it on life support.

“It was awful,” Freeze says.

Ole Miss had one SEC win in two years, and hadn’t felt good about itself in longer than that. Those two Cotton Bowls Houston Nutt won? Fools gold.

He was a hired gun; nothing else. Rolled into town on the heels of a public breakup from one SEC school, only to latch onto another, win some games, lose more and eventually leave the place in shambles.

Oxford had become nothing more than a weigh station, a place to stop and go and if it all worked out, you could make more money elsewhere. And if it didn’t, shoot, may as well kiss your career goodbye.

So it’s no surprise that when Freeze arrived at the annual menagerie that is SEC Media Days last July, he walked to the podium and the first question wasn’t about his plan or his goals, but about Ole Miss as the punchline.

Steve Spurrier was telling anyone who would listen that day that it wasn’t fair Georgia “gets to play Ole Miss” and South Carolina “has to play LSU.” Freeze looked puzzled and angered and finally, after feebly trying to be diplomatic, said, “we’ll remember that.” And the assembled media laughed—because, you know, it’s Ole Miss.

Fast forward to National Signing Day, 2013. Now everyone wants to know how he did it. How Freeze landed an unprecedented recruiting class; how he convinced all of those elite recruits to play for Ole Miss.

You want to know how? It’s a lot more complicated than you think.

It’s about finding a disorganized, disappointed—and depressed—program and breathing energy and enthusiasm into it. It’s about going an entire season with 68 or fewer scholarship players—at one point as low as 22 under the 85 limit—in the biggest, baddest conference in college football, clawing out six wins and getting those precious extra 15 days of bowl practice.

Those 15 extra practices led to a bowl game, where more than 40,000 Ole Miss fans packed Birmingham’s Legion Field for a bowl game that meant nothing—and everything. That win over Pitt validated the dream Freeze began selling a year earlier, and underscored a promise he made Beverly and Sonny Nkemdiche last summer.

We’ll win at Ole Miss.

“He just had this aura about him,” said Ole Miss quarterback Bo Wallace. “Things changed quickly.”

And that takes us all the way back to National Signing Day, when jealousy quickly morphed into animosity. How in the world did Ole Miss get five 5-star players to sign, and land a top 5 recruiting class months after breaking a 16-game SEC losing streak?

Listen up, everyone. Freeze explains right here:

— DE Robert Nkemdiche: “Beverly and Sonny told me if you can show progress as a program and Denzel (Nkemdiche) shows progress, Robert will play for Ole Miss,” Freeze said. “He and his brother want to play together, and we want them to play together.”

Nkemdiche’s parents told Freeze this before the season began—you know, just in case he didn’t have enough pressure turning around the program. Denzel Nkemdiche developed into a star linebacker and earned Sporting News Freshman All-American honors, and his younger brother Robert—the nation’s No. 1 recruit—did what everyone thought he would: sign with Ole Miss.

— DT Lavon Hooks: “Houston Nutt signed him a couple of years ago and placed him in a junior college,” Freeze said. “All I had to do was not screw that one up.”

— DB Tony Conner: “Tony lives 20 minutes down the road in Batesville and plays for South Panola. Ole Miss doesn’t lose kids from South Panola. Hasn’t for years.”

— WR Laquon Treadwell: “A year ago, we had the foresight and vision to sign Laquon’s best friend, Anthony Standifer,” Freeze said. “He had nowhere to go and we had a scholarship, and he fit what we wanted in a player. I told our guys then, this may help us down the road with Laquon. Sure enough, Anthony was a big factor.”

— OT Laremy Tunsil: “That was all Nkemdiche,” Freeze said. “We started recruiting (Tunsil) about a year ago, and we were behind. We worked hard at building a relationship, but once Robert decided where he was going, he recruited (Tunsil). You need a little luck sometimes.”

“You know why Quincy came to Ole Miss? Because Laquon told him to,” Freeze said. “Laquon became the best recruiter we had.”

And suddenly, before anyone could grasp it all, the unsightly mess became stark-crazy beautiful—with a sidecar of controversy.

Maybe it would have been different if Treadwell didn’t Tweet a picture of his hand over a few hundred-dollar bills after committing to the Rebels. Or if Nkemdiche would have committed to Ole Miss long ago like most on the Ole Miss staff thought he would.

Maybe then there wouldn’t be the nasty undercurrent of someone’s getting paid. One minute, you’re elated about gaining a critical commitment, the next you’re seeing a Tweet from former Mississippi State wideout Chad Bumphis telling recruits “Don’t go with the money.”

One minute you’re closing in on an unprecedented recruiting class, the next Mississippi State athletic director Scott Stricklin sends out this Tweet: “How about the pearls of wisdom coming from Chad Bumphis today.”

“Unfortunately, it has gotten out of hand with social media today,” Freeze said. “The shots some people are willing to take at others; it’s sickening. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”

Midway through the season, after a heartbreaking last-minute loss to Texas A&M, Freeze knew something had to change. He was down to the low 60s in scholarship players, and the Rebels were 3-3 and still hadn’t won an SEC game in two years.

More important, the prospects of showing “progress” for the Nkemdiches was slipping away. So Freeze pulled back on practice, went from 120 minutes to 80 to save bodies and injuries—then watched his team play its best football of the season.

“There were times when I thought, can we do this?” Freeze said. “Can we really get it done with all we have going on here? I’ve never admitted that until now.”

And Ole Miss has never looked this good, this prepared, for the future.